


diminuendo

by rlbcaged



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Blood and Injury, Hannibal Lecter is Not a Cannibal, Hannibal Lecter is a Softie, Hannibal Lecter is not the Chesapeake Ripper, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Not Canon Compliant, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Someone Help Will Graham, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Will Graham Has Panic Attacks, Will Graham Needs a Hug, Will Graham's Father is a Dick, but it's not graphic, improper use of italics, vent fic, will graham is not okay
Language: Dansk
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:48:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24209215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rlbcaged/pseuds/rlbcaged
Summary: Will had seen the broken necks of his father’s empty beer bottles glinting in the moonlight, saw how sharp they looked. He heard his father’s snores through the walls separating them, felt the way they grated on his brain and made his stomach shift and his breath grow unbearably louder until it all matched the constant orchestra beat of his horrible blood flowing through his horrible body. Will knew it was all inside of him and he knew what sharp things did. He sat in the forest-field behind his house and tried to cure himself with dirty glass. Will just wanted silence.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 94





	diminuendo

**Author's Note:**

> i've been alone too long and i needed to project onto my fav character whoops. all mistakes are mine and i don't own the characters.

Logically, Will knows he can’t feel his organ shifting, but he does. He knows he can’t feel his blood, his sticky awful blood, pumping through his twisting veins. But he does. His heart, his breath, his blinks, his chewing, his thoughts,  _ it’s all too loud. _ The first time Will noticed it, he was young. He sat at the kitchen table and stared at his mother’s washed away blood still tacky on his father’s skin. His father asked him what the fuck he was gawking at and Will felt his heart thumping painfully for the first time in his chest. He was eight the first time he tried to make it quiet again. 

Will had seen the broken necks of his father’s empty beer bottles glinting in the moonlight, saw how sharp they looked. He heard his father’s snores through the walls separating them, felt the way they grated on his brain and made his stomach shift and his breath grow unbearably louder until it all matched the constant orchestra beat of his horrible blood flowing through his horrible body. Will knew it was all inside of him and he knew what sharp things did. He sat in the forest-field behind his house and tried to cure himself with dirty glass. Will just wanted silence.

Will awoke to birdsong and dried crimson on his arm. His screams drew his father out to find him scratching at it-  _ to get the hell away from the feeling _ \- and for the next few weeks he had black on his body to match the red beneath his skin. Will soon found the one thing to help him, if only for a little bit. His showers began lasting for hours without him in it, once his father slipped gracelessly into his comas, the rumbling sounds of the water drowning everything else out. His body finally pretending to be quiet.

As Will grew, he got better at pretending. Better at faking normal, faking like he wasn't always two seconds away from tearing his own traitorous heart out and tossing his own slithering organs off a cliff. His strong aversions to sound and touch he blamed on a spectrum he wasn’t a part of. He got a job editing psychology papers for FBI professors and he made enough money to counteract his ridiculously high water bill. Grocery trips were limited to once a month, the flickering lights and the squeaking wheels of shopping carts and the overhead announcements and the pulsating inhalations of his fellow shoppers-  _ it was all too much.  _ Five minutes felt like an eternity as Will desperately shouldered his way out of the store, having dropped his basket in the middle of an aisle after a child smacking on a lollipop began wailing in his ear when she accidentally dropped it on the ground. HIs teeth ached and his skin crawled and his heart thump thump thumped in his chest as he flew over the speed limit to reach his shower where he sat for nearly four hours. He only forces himself to go when the rumbling in his stomach has his hand trembling towards the knife-block to make it shut the fuck up. 

Will likes being alone, where his suffering only comes from his own horrible noises. He runs the sink while he works, scratching at his arms as second nature to quiet the red flowing beneath the skin. He eats in the rare moments that the sound of his chewing doesn’t make him want to slit his own throat. He’s good at pretending, but he isn’t better. His scars irritate his irritated skin. He has nightmares that leave him waking with his own nails in his chest, trying to reach his heart and his veins. He wants it all out. He has dreams where he chokes to death on his own blood and he’s finally at peace. There’s moments, more often than not, when all of the sounds and horrible noises build and build and build inside of him and he has to get it out so he  _ screams  _ until he can't and in those few ringing seconds of silence afterwards, he’s okay. 

And then he’s not again.

Jack Crawford reaches out to him one day asking for help with an actual case and Will can’t say no or he loses his job and he can’t explain anything else about himself so he goes to Quantico. He goes to the noise and the people and loud Jack Crawford and he hurts. Every second spent with Jack Crawford’s loud breathing and carrying voice feels like a hammer against Will’s skull, a razor blade against his skin and a microphone within his blood cells. He can’t scream in the man's office so he shakes and shakes and shakes until his rattling bones drown out Jack’s megaphone lungs. 

He thinks he excuses himself and Jack asks if he’s okay but he  _ can’t,  _ the fluorescent hallways buzz in his ears and the tapping of heels on the tile fills his ears and he stumbles into a blood red bathroom that squeezes in on him, that has his body rising to a cacophony, and all he sees is fake crimson dripping down his arms and he wheezes out a pained cry. He doesn’t remember filling up the sink but the next thing he is aware of is the stillness of water around his head and he opens his mouth. The awful red stuff pours from his ears and his nose and out of his eyes. It comes from his mouth and rises up from beneath the skin that is stretched too tight over his creaking bones and out into the water. If he stays underwater long enough, will he empty out? Can he withstand the pounding of his head long enough for him to drain like a broken water balloon? Will knows he can’t escape it but damned if he isn’t willing to try. 

Black spots cloud his vision and the pounding of his arteries is worse than the blood that drips from his skin but just a little longer at it will all stop.  _ Yes _ , Will thinks,  _ finally.  _ He loses consciousness, and Jack Crawford yanks his head from the murky sink.

When Will wakes, he is angry. He was so close to peace, blessed silence. He was going to be okay but now he can feel his eyes blinking and his heart thump thump thumping and too much breathing. He sees Jack Crawford and meets Hannibal Lecter. 

Months go by. Jack Crawford has not asked him onto another case and he is not better, but he has learned new ways to deal. Hannibal can control his body like no one else he’s ever seen. His breathing sounds practically nonexistent, his treadfall silent, and his accented voice is gentle on Will’s nerves. At one appointment, the soundproof walls of Hannibal’s office lure Will into the first uninterrupted night of sleep he’s had in forever and when he wakes to the man’s soft snores, it doesn’t bother him as much as it probably should. Hannibal touches his shoulder and he doesn’t want to tear the man’s arm off and scrub his own until he’s raw. He kisses Hannibal one day and it shocks him to find he doesn’t feel the desperate need to rip his own lips off and scream himself hoarse. 

Later, they move in together, and Will finds he doesn’t want to die anymore these days. Most days he doesn’t want to drain himself dry, he doesn’t want to only hear his shower running, and he can’t fault his heart for beating when Hannibal is the one who sets it off.


End file.
